


Where There Is Despair

by Daseyshipper



Category: When Calls the Heart (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 20:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19384096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daseyshipper/pseuds/Daseyshipper
Summary: Abigail knows now that Henry tried to stop the accident, but is it enough to help them both to move on?





	Where There Is Despair

**Author's Note:**

> It struck me watching the finale that the Elizabeth/Henry scene really seemed meant for Abigail/Henry. And Henry leaving the dance was a specific shot - why? So I reimagined these scenes with Abigail being still in Hope Valley. Not sure if this will be 2 or 3 chapters, but you know that Henrigail would not be an easy road.

“Henry.” Abigail’s voice stirred him from his thoughts. He shuffled off the step to greet her, having spent much of the day dreading her reaction to the earlier scene between him and Bill.

“I believe this letter belongs to you,” she said, her voice as warm and soft as the hands that held out the paper to him. He took it silently, and sat down again, like a dog going back to his corner.

“Henry,” she started again, joining him on the step. “I had always blamed you for this accident. For the loss of my Noah, and my Peter.” Henry flinched and lowered his eyes further away from her. “It was so hard to get past it, but I saw good in you even before this. Even before I knew that you had tried to do the right thing.”

Her words twisted his heart enough that he turned his face up in anguish. “My trying didn’t save a single one of those men’s lives.” 

“It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t do enough, Abigail.” He stopped there, not willing to continue. Afraid to tell her how it haunted him every day, not just because of the loss of those lives, but also because it meant he would never be worthy of her, because it was wrong to even entertain the thought that he could be.

Abigail spoke more firmly now. “It is Not. Your. Fault.” Henry wanted to believe her, but to his ear, it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than him. And he did not believe either one of them could ever accept this as the truth.

Abigail saw in his face how deep and raw this wound was for him still, how the letter had ripped it freshly open, and how he still could not bear the weight of it on him. His regret and contrition were palpable in the hang of his head, in the roughness of his breath. Her heart ached for him. “Henry, you are not the man people think you are.”

The kindness felt like a sting against so tender a soul. Needing to relieve within himself the tension of being so close to her in this moment, of feeling so seen by her, his face broke into a strange smile. “I’m sure you mean that as a compliment.”

“I do. I think it’s time you stop living in the past. It’s time to move on from that terrible tragedy.” She pinned the words in the air with a forced finality, and Henry again had the sense that she was speaking to herself as well as to him.

He spoke tentatively, as though his words could physically fill the space between them and he could not let that happen. “I don’t know how.”

Abigail’s eyes fluttered softly down to her hands. “I understand that,” she began, not meeting his gaze. “For the longest time, I didn’t know how either. When Noah died, the earth fell out from under my feet. Everyone thought I was so strong, but inside, I was just falling endlessly. It was fighting _you_ , Henry, that helped ground me once again.”

Abigail’s words hit him like a slap to the face. Henry turned sharply away, somehow managing to drown even further in the shame of the collapse and all that had come after it.

She continued, slowly, deliberately, still looking away. “And then it was forgiving you that helped me heal. And then it was … “

Though he could not see her, he could hear as Abigail trailed off her words that she had begun to cry. He turned instinctively to comfort her, his body set further aflame at the thought of reaching out to touch this creature he felt still so unworthy to know.

But his hand went unseen and unsoothed, as Abigail had already raised herself hastily to leave.

“You’re not the man people think you are,” she repeated, swiping roughly at her face. “And I’m not the woman people think I am. But the difference is, I wish I was.”

Henry stared in awe at her form above him, wanting so much to pull her to him, to caress her hair as he pressed her wet face against his coat to absorb all of her hurt, but knowing that not a single part of his hope was possible. So distant was the feeling of hope to him that he could not even fathom the meaning in Abigail’s words, thinking only - as he always suspected - that she truly had not forgiven him and wished she could.

When he heard her mutter a quick goodbye, he knew he ought to stand, but he could only stay frozen in place as she made her way back to the café. 

\---

“This dance is ladies’ choice!”

Henry heard Rosemary’s voice ring out and watched the bustle begin. Seeking to avoid the uselessness and slight embarrassment of being an old disgraced man waiting for an invitation to dance, Henry slipped quietly out into the evening. He took no care to hurry – first, because of his leg, and second, because it was a night where he could walk around quietly in contemplation while all others were occupied.

The sky over Hope Valley was a wondrous blanket of blackness punctuated with beacons of light. Beneath the ground had proven to be a similar experience, though the black oil itself was the beacon – yet more hope in Hope Valley. Hope of prosperity – for the townspeople, for Abigail as mayor. She had spoken in his favor when Bill had grasped so frantically for a reason to try to fault him in Jesse’s complaint. Henry scoffed to himself, wondering who’d ever thought such an overtly partial man as Bill Avery should serve as judge, but his mind stayed primarily with Abigail. As it did often. As he wished almost as often that it wouldn’t.

Hope. The oil was hope for him, he supposed, in the way that monetary fortunes were an attractive and useful thing to have. But over the years, he had changed his concept of hope. Money came and went, he knew this. If it weren’t oil, he could’ve found some other venture, or expanded his work at Lee’s mill – money would always come to him.

But acceptance, forgiveness, and – dare he even think it – love? These were (he could admit privately, silently, on this desolate night) the fortunes he wanted. But these fortunes did not favor such a man as Henry Gowen.

He settled his cane against the side of the saloon and leaned back, looking up again at that expansive blackness.

“Ladies’ choice?”

It was the anxiety in her voice that surprised him, even more so than the fact that she had appeared there, a little ways from his side. He turned to face her, a bit stunned.

“Abigail?”

His voice barely made its way to her, raspy from disuse and concern. She was looking at him, a nervous expression dancing on her eyes and a light blush spreading across her ivory cheeks. She looked down at her hands, fidgeting for a moment until she spoke again.

“The dance. Rosemary made it ladies’ choice. And when I looked around, I saw you leaving. I wondered for a moment why that was, but then I began to look for someone else to dance with.”

Henry smiled wryly, shyly. “I have no doubt you found someone more than willing, Abigail.”

“I might have. I don’t really know.” She took a step closer to him. “Because I knew, Henry, even as I pretended at looking around, that the only man I _wanted_ to be willing was you.”

Henry could suddenly feel his heart in his chest, the fullness of it in that moment being so strange a sensation. He looked up, seeing a pained expression in Abigail’s eyes, the red in her cheeks deepening. He dared not move, could not even breathe, lest he break the spell of this moment and arise from this fevered dream.

Abigail was unnerved by his silence and rushed to speak again. “You think me a fool. A foolish woman. And I know that that is what I am. What else can I be when I dishonor my husband’s memory this way? I’ve tried so hard to be a good person, a good example here for Hope Valley, while every day I was losing pieces of my heart to the man I believed responsible for so much of our pain.”

Henry exhaled, moving closer to her. Her words were beating and breaking his heart all at once. “Abigail?” His voice was questioning, seeking. He did not trust himself that he had understood her.

“And then today,” she continued, “when I found out… when I found out that you tried, that you tried to do the right thing, tried to save them, I thought… maybe I can forgive myself now. Maybe this is okay, feeling this way. But hearing about the mine again, thinking about how this all started, how I came to be here…”

Abigail was crying now, and Henry realized that he was too. She had stopped speaking, choking back her sobs. Henry reached out, gripping her by the arms to make her look up at him.

“Henry, how can I forgive myself when Noah’s death is how I came to love you?”

He crushed her against him, his tears mixing with hers, her cries muffled against his skin. “Abigail, I love you. I love you.” He whispered it over and over again into her hair, stopping only to press kisses on her head, her temple, her forehead.

On the side of the saloon, shrouded in darkness, with just those tiny bits of hope seeking to pull them into view, Henry and Abigail clung to each other, kissing desperately, painfully. They trembled, each of them - Henry with the force of this long-awaited salvation and Abigail with a terror of this love that had placed her beyond redemption.

 


End file.
